4-star holiday cottage near Malvern, Worcestershire
The north wall of the Rhydd Barn facing the common needed painting and this was done last week. The other walls were repaired where necessary with white paint. The iron hand rail on the steps and iron side gate have been re-painted black.
The Barn looks very smart for the new season.
The tubs on the patio are full of fresh daffodils—so spring is coming after such a wet winter.
Rhydd Barn was nominated as a finalist in the Best Self Catering section of the Visit Worcestershire Awards for Excellence 2013. We were one of four self catering establishments to be nominated in this year’s awards. Although we did not win our section, Rhydd Barn received a ‘Commendation’ from the judges at Destination Worcestershire’s Annual Tourism Conference held at Stanbrook Abbey in Callow End on Thursday 23 October 2013.
In the middle of the meadow at last an evening primrose is established. The grass at the back of the Barn (where a tree was cut down a couple of years ago) is growing well. I hope to start a log pile there to encourage invertebrates in the dip beyond the grass.
The west wall of the Barn has been painted and the inside wall was treated and painted where a small patch of damp had appeared by the first floor window.
A new cleaner/caretaker has started to look after Rhydd Barn replacing Nat Halfpenny who has left to have a baby. Our new cleaner is the wife of the gardener who has been looking after the grounds for a few years.
People have continued to enjoy their stay at the Barn—many of them repeat customers.
Our 2-for-1 offer to visit Elgar’s birthplace at Broadchurch is very popular.
Rhydd Barn recently had its yearly assessment VisitEngland and we were very pleased to continue to achieve a Four Star award for self-catering and a Gold Award for high quality standards; also we continued to achieve the Speciality Award ‘Walkers Welcome’. The inspection was carried out on 19 April 2013. Here are some highlights from the report:
The assessor stressed that to maintain this award long-term maintenance and development are important. She suggested some changes and improvements which we will implement during this year.
We have finally got around to replacing our trusty old ancient Sony television for an up to date wide screen Sony digital (Freeview) television!
The old set was a Sony Trinitron KV-14T1U colour tv which appears to date from 1995 (at least this is the date of the instruction manual)—so I guess you could say we have had our money’s worth out of that set! It still works perfectly—there is
nothing wrong with it—but we felt that people expect something more up to date nowadays, especially for a 4-star establishment.
The new set is a Sony Bravia KDL-19BX200BU (where do they get these ‘names’ from?) which we got in the John Lewis sale. It gets all the Freeview channels and will of course still work when the old analogue tv signal is switched off here in September.